


You Get What You Pay For

by fresne



Series: Triptych [3]
Category: Macbeth - Shakespeare
Genre: Distopian Future, Gen, Yuletide, Yuletide 2015, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 15:45:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5422781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Old Hecate said, "Let me refine on that. Why have you been sayin' ta Lord Macbeth, such that he n' his wife decided it would be a foine idea ta fill tha old king full a' stab wounds and blame it on some dead men." </p><p>The witches tried to look innocent. They were not entirely successful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Get What You Pay For

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gehayi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gehayi/gifts).



> Thanks to Bookwyrm for the Beta. houtout to the amazing yuletide beta list.  
> Any remaining errors are my own.
> 
> No notes, but I obviously really liked the open ended prompt.

Moira's mother abandoned her at Old Hecate's feet saying, "Tha herbs ye gave me ta keep off a child didn'a work. So by my reckonin' this child is yers." 

Muttering about fools who couldn't follow directions that were clearly written on the packaging, Old Hacate took the bundle that was Moira, and gave her milk from the two headed goat with the twisted horns. 

By some strange coincidence, it were a goat woman that brought Barbary to Old Hecate. She was one them hybrids that had been all the rage before what passed for civilization went tits up. Not one of them creatures that came from the other side when the bombs cracked open the gates between the worlds. She said, "I found zee child in a…eww… abandon genomic facilitay. You know... zee one by zee flaming reever. She was… how you say, screaming for her crèche, but they were all dead. Very sad. So I bring her here." 

Old Hecate sighed and muttered that she should have set up in the military base like her sister wanted, but oh no, she'd had to have sunshine on her face. She'd examined the glowing binary number tattooed on Barbary's arm and named her after her favorite pitch dark bar in the Fairy Realms. 

Anat walked into the Glen where their cottage were tucked. Somehow, she'd gotten by the mechanical hounds and wee biting pixies. Her little feet were bleeding and she had the smoky rattle of Boston in her lungs. She'd come fleeing plague, which had Old Hecate muttering, because plague meant the Holy Rolling Prespreters on their Trinitarian three wheelers would be out burning Crofts. Not that she had to worry about being burned out herself. She were too powerful for that, what with the weather machines and reanimating cauldrons and laser lanterns, but still they were a pest. 

Old Hecate was teaching the girls the applications of particle physics on transmutation when the Lady of Glamour came calling. Seemed she'd gotten herself into a bit of a fuss. She'd been playing rumpy pumpy with the King and now was going to be his baby mother. "I haint had sex with me husband in months. Tha Holy Rollers sent him as a missionary ta preach to tha heathens in Los Angels." 

Old Hecate raised her lantern, which was not only a laser canon, but a damn fine light. "This is ma problem how 'xactly?" 

The Lady started bawling. "They'll stone me. I'll be so drugged I won' know me own name. Then when I've delivered tha child, they'll put tha Red A on me chest and pillory me fer an example. I don' want to be a 'xample." 

"You want ta get away with yer sin is what yer saying," said Old Hecate, who liked to be clear. 

"Well, yeah!" said the Lady of Glamour. 

"Foine, foine." Old Hecate called the girls over. "Now watch what I'm doing careful like. This is a precious bit a magic." She waved a wand over the Lady of Glamour's belly. "First I transform tha wee bairn into a chrysalis, which I then teleport (usin' a bit a physics we ain't got inta yet) where a thing can be in two places at tha same time." She handed the chrysalis to the Lady of Glamour. "There ya go. When yer husband comes back, fuck him and then swallow that there bairn. Presto chango, he'll think the bairn is his." 

The Lady of Glamour looked at the chrysalis in her hand. "I were 'xpecting ya ta kill me husband so I could marry the King and be Queen." 

Old Hecate snorted. "Ya get what ya pay for. Now off with ya before I set tha lion-lizard on ya." 

Greymalkin was Anat's magic project. She'd been getting in touch with her cultural roots by building a golem, but decided not to build anything as silly as a man. 

Barbary later heard through the mirror scope that the Lord of Glamour had returned from Our Lady of the City of Los Angels, having narrowly escaped being eaten by Boggarts (which was a common problem), and that they were delivered of a squalling baby girl. The girl naturally looked a good deal like the King, but since he'd been on a nine month honeymoon with his new bride, the Queen of the Zeplanders, no one thought much of it. Time dilated a bit differently outside of the Glen, so in a wink that girl was grown and was having a bairn out of wedlock of her own. 

Given that she'd taken genetic samples from a whole raft of Boggies and Gwyllgi, and engineered the wee thing, the Holy Rollers decided to merely disintegrate it as an abomination. But that was neither here nor there. What was more important was that lass realized that her bio-dad was the King and but for an accident of magic and teleportation, she'd have been the Queen to be. 

Now as will happen, Old Hecate decided to go on a bit of a trip in the eldritch lands of unnamable and unknowable horror, which were therefore so unspeakable that the brochures were plain confusing, for a bit of a break from motherhood now that her girls were old enough to be on their own. She told the girls not to raise the dead, not to wreck the brooms, cook in the spell cauldron, and, seriously, not to raise the dead. 

She'd been gone for five minutes when Moira said, "We should make tha daughter a' tha Lady a Glamour a Queen as is her blood right." 

Barbary who was looking through the future scope said, "Everyone dies if we do that." 

"Gah… ya never want to do anythin' fun," said Moira. 

Anat, who had been reading "The Merchant of Venice," and rewriting it so Shylock got his pound of flesh said, "Muither told us not ta raise tha dead. She didna say we couldna cause everyone ta die." She shrugged. "Anyway, they have free choice. They could choose not ta all die." 

So they went to where the Lady's husband was fighting Vikings from Minneapolis. They did have to pause when they saw him, because Lord Macbeth was a prime looking man, and they were old enough and young enough that that was a prime consideration. They hailed him up and told him the future, which was easy enough. They figured he'd have himself gene tested and when that didn't pan out any relationship to the King, he'd go test his Lady. 

Though after Macbeth left, Moira said, "Anat, what was that about Banquo's sons being kings after?" 

Anat snorted. "What kinda political system decides whose ta be king based on some sort a watery tart or witches in tha mist sayin' so." 

"No, I mean what do ya mean by sons?" Moira crossed her arms. "They could be daughters, or hermicites or," she jerked her head in Barbary's direction, "try to be sensitive." 

"I identify female," said Barbary. "It's tha most efficient definition in a binary world." 

Still, Anat apologized to Barbary and built her a magic owl. Because it was fluffy and intelligent. Also, it was a magic owl. 

They realized they were in trouble when Old Hecate came home and said, "What have ya three done?" 

They tried to look innocent and failed. Old Hecate said, "Let me refine on that. Why have you been sayin' ta Lord Macbeth, such that he n' his wife decided it would be a foine idea ta fill tha old king full a' stab wounds and blame it on some dead men." 

"We could raise tha King and Queen from tha dead," said Anat, and at Moira's look, "an' everone else in a class non-specific sorta way." 

"No one is raisin' tha dead," said Old Hecate. "Cept under very specific conditions where we'll scare Macbeth back inta only killin' people on tha battlefield. Fer eff's sakes, he's already killed his best friend." 

They met with Macbeth and showed him spirits who told him some pretty see through promises that he couldn't be killed by any man living, which left accident, disease, "Not to mention women," muttered Moira, "though I resent that grouping." Somehow this resulted in Macbeth killing everyone. 

"That failed pretty spectacular like," said Old Hecate. 

"We could always raise tha dead," said Anat, as she groomed Greymalkin. 

"We're not raising tha dead," said Old Hecate. "But I can tell you what we are doin'. We're bioengineerin' an army of magiclike plant persons, because after promisin' Macbeth he'd only die when Birnam wood came ta Dunsinane, I'll be damned if it'll be some anti-climactic bit with soldiers puttin' shrubs on their helmets." 

Moira was disappointed that the prophecy turned out to be that Macbeth could only be killed by a man who'd be born through C-section, but was mollified when she found out that Macduff was actually a vat grown clone from an alternative dimension after the first Macduff had died showing off how he could fly by jumping off a barn. 

Afterwards, Anat complained so much about not being allowed to raise the dead that Old Hecate said, "Foine. You'll have ta learn from yer own mistakes someday. May as well be now, while I'm still about ta help with the cleanin' a them." 

Which was how King and Queen Macbeth became King and Queen of the Vampires on Venus, which even Old Hecate had to admit wasn't that bad. Or at least Queen Macbeth sent a really nice tin of gourmet popcorn each solstice, which amounted to the same thing.

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


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